eRepublik is a massively multiplayer online game, web browser game developed by eRepublik Labs which launched on October 21, 2008 and is accessible via the Internet. The game is set in a mirror world (called the New World) where players, referred to as citizens, join in local and national politics where they can help formulate national economic and social policies as well as initiating wars with their neighbours and/or tread the path of a private citizen working, fighting and voting for their state.
It was developed by Alexis Bonte and George Lemnaru. eRepublik is programmed in PHP using Symfony framework, and runs in most modern browsers.
eRepublik has spawned a number of similar games due to the commercial success.
Funding
eRepublik has raised a total of 2.75 million euros in three rounds:
- Seed - February 2007 - 200.000 euros
- Angel - June 2008 - 550.000 euros
- Series A - June 2009 - 2.000.000 euros
Overview
eRepublik is a global massively multiplayer online game where players can participate in a variety of daily activities. Citizens of the New World can be employees, own businesses, form political parties, vote in elections, become party presidents, members of Congress or country presidents, write newspaper articles and even go to war as citizens of virtual versions of real life countries. The game has very few visual elements and is primarily text-based in nature.
Upon joining, a citizen picks which virtual country he wishes to join. Each of these countries is named after an actual country in the real world, and is generally located similarly (warfare may cause certain regional displacements). The citizen then seeks employment at a company within that country, and is allowed the opportunity to train as a soldier for that country. Training, and working at a company is done on a daily basis. One of the main drawing points of the website is that it takes a mere "14 minutes a day" to participate.
eRepublik Gold is a fictional currency used in the eRepublik World. It is the main reference point for all the local virtual currencies (examples: USD, GBP) and it is used to buy additional features (such as companies) within the New World. It can be obtained freely by reaching certain levels or achievements, or purchased with real life currency. Many users have expressed dislike over the changes to the game which requires gold to use.
eRepublik Modules
My Land
A citizen has a patch of land where they can construct various buildings, such as farms, mines, factories, storage and training grounds. Those buildings can be used once a day to produce raw materials, finished products, store materials and products, and increase the citizen's strength, a value determining how much damage is done in battles. Buildings can be constructed with local currency or gold, and upgraded with only gold. To upgrade a level 4 factory to level 5 requires 350 gold for example, and 300 gold costs 99.9 euros.
The effectiveness of economy buildings depends on the natural resources that a nation has. There are 10 different natural resources, each boosting production by 20% for either Food Raw Resource and Food, or Weapon Raw Resource and Weapon. Duplicate natural resources does not give any bonus, and the map is arranged in a way so that countries with a high amount of natural regions in real life does not have an advantage over countries with fewer regions.
Politics Module
As simple citizens, players can join a party by reaching a certain level. Once they have joined a party, they can run for party presidency. If they campaign successfully and can convince their party colleagues to choose them over a more established name then they become the leaders of the party and they can choose their party candidates for congress (if party is ranked in the top 5 nationally) or presidency.
On the fifth of every month eRepublik holds presidential elections, on the fifteenth the party presidential elections and on the twenty-fifth the congressional elections. Days before the presidential vote the top five parties will select a person to run for president, and then it is decided by a vote by the populace. The congress elections are more complicated than the rest.
The party presidents of the top 5 parties select a number of persons from their party to run in each region against other parties' representatives, after which people living in that region vote. The percentage of people voting for a party determines the number of congressional seats the party gets, a total of 40 for a country if it has at least four regions. Larger countries such as the USA have more seats because each state will receive at least one congress member no matter how small its population. If there is a tie eRepublik automatically chooses by referring to experience points.
War Module
To declare war on other countries, the president or congress of the country proposes a Natural enemy law. If the vote passes, the two countries are at war and each region is attacked either by order of the president or automatically by the game every 24hours. In wars, the citizens of the respective countries fight independently, each one fighting a player of the target country whose health varies, after defeating the opponent influence is gained on, which shows the current percentage of influence the countries at war have over that region. Eight battles, between one and a half to two hours long, must be won by either side before the region is declared conquered or secure. The battles will continue until one side has won eight battles.
Wars are potentially essential to the power of a country in eRepublik because they allow citizens of the countries that are a part of the wars to become stronger and obtain higher military ranks, thus enabling them to do more damage in fights. Theoretically a nation that has experienced and battle hardened citizens can become a global power.
In reality the changes to unlimited gold purchasing means that one older and stronger player can conquer any medium sized nation by continually fighting (tanking) via using their gold to purchase wellness packs. Many of the exsisting 'empires' of the new world consist of nations that have signifigant numbers of these types of players.
News Module
Any citizen can create a newspaper in which he can publish articles. Other citizens of his/her can read these articles, vote on them, comment on them or even subscribe to the newspapers of other citizens. Every 1000 subscribers a newspaper gets, the owner receives gold and the "Media Mogul" medal.
This once active module has become largely obsolete with the advent of the recent changes that restricted publications to one nation and furthur split the media up into 7 categories. This has however freed up server load and eased the workload of the moderators.
Gameplay
The role play of the New World consists of combining the capabilities of the above modules to reach goals and become leader in one or more domains. Citizens can use newspapers to promote themselves, their companies, parties, or even countries. The congress of a country sets taxes to enforce economic policies. To wage successful wars, the economy of a country has to sustain it and citizens have to be motivated.
Other features
Functionalities include a Twitter-like shoutbox system. Gold can also be purchased in unlimited amounts. Game developers, noting the use of IRC channels and forums outside of the main eRepublik site, and the importance of social interaction in the game, released a new module, the Chat Module, allowing users to create their own chat rooms, and interact with other citizens while remaining on the main site, now removed
The user-maintained forums and IRC channels however remained more popular and this little used feature has since been removed.
eRepublik Rising (v2)
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eRepublik Rising is the second version of eRepublik and was officially released on July 7, 2010 after more than half year of announcements. Along with v2 came a new look and new economic and war modules.
The game has suffered several major hackings, an ever increasing numbers of bugs, and the number of illegal bots has rocketed causing major disruption in the game.
Since eRepublik Rising's release, the game's total member base has dropped by nearly half, peaking in early July at almost 400,000 players, and, by September 12, dropping to around 186,000 The true reason for this decline cannot be known. However, it appears that nations with larger numbers of new players have been more affected. Poland, which was once the largest nation in the game, peaking at over 60,000 players, has seen a swift decline, dropping to 15,000 players exactly 2 months after eRepublik Rising's release.
The cost for living in v2 is higher than in v1, due to larger health losses, a new update forcing players to consume food manually (as opposed to eating 1 piece of food every day automatically), and an economic collapse caused by the switching of many profitable companies in v1 being switched by the game upon v2's release into companies which cannot profit due to the good they produce. The switching had caused to admins to alienate the crucial capitalist class of the game which ran the companies and employed workers. Many players accuse the admins of implementing higher costs of living to force players to purchase more gold. An update released on May 25 prior to v2's release removed the contract system which banks depended on, preventing players needing money to support their lives from taking loans.
The demographic and economic instability of the game after v2's release has caused the collapse of many nations as well.For example, Russia, often considered one of the most stable and powerful nations at the end of v1 had been partitioned by Poland, the USA, and China in war. Australia, a closely guarded ally of the victorious powers in the partitions of Russia, had been easily conquered by Indonesia, commonly regarded as an aging empire which had lost its rich resource foreign regions months prior to v1's release during an American campaign to conquer their Indian and Chinese regions.
Awards
- December 12, 2007 - LeWeb3 2007 The honorable mention company
- October 9, 2008 - The Future of Web Apps conference winner
